Story and love : the source of ethical values in Kurdish culture

Story and Love. The Source of Ethical Values in Kurdish Culture. The article aims to dispel the widespread conviction that the ethical dimension of Kurdish culture (so called ahlaq) boils down to the Islamic or tribal community norms. In fact, ethics and the process of moral education is much broader. It was also rooted in Kurdish oral tradition of storytelling and in the concept of Love presented in Yezidi sacred texts, Ehmede Khani’s classical poem Mem and Zin and in the Sufi tradition. Alasdair MacIntyre defines so called "traditional communities" rather as "heroic" ones pointing out the role of heroic stories in bringing up the mature and loyal member of such a community. His definition is well suited to the Kurdish traditional society where the meaning of heroic deeds and ethics were often taken from the many diverse stories. Courage and honour were the most important values on which that a single member or group would always rely upon. In other words both values were crucial in building the fragile equilibrium of a given society. On the other hand, the Love idea was able to challenge the existing patterns and open it up to new meanings and solutions. In Khani’s work Love became crucial even for a ruler and man in obtaining maturity and perfection